August 9, 2014

17th century book of watercolour paints by A. Boogert

Filed under: Art,Design,Gadgets,Technology by Branko Collin @ 3:39 pm

spiegel-verf-a-boogert-p826 spiegel-verf-a-boogert-p827

Eric Kwakkel found this extensive 800-page book on how to prepare and mix watercolour paints in an online library in France.

It was published in Dutch in 1692 by one A. Boogert:

He explains how to mix the colours and how to change their tone by adding “one, two or three portions of water”. To illustrate his point he fills each facing page with various shades of the colour in question […]. To top it he made an index of all the colours he described, which in itself is a feast to look at.

The book is called ‘The Clear Bright Mirror of the Art of Painting’ (‘De Klaerlighte Spiegel der Verfkonst’) and is written in plain Dutch. Unfortunately I keep tripping over Mr Boogert’s handwriting, otherwise I might have treated you to a couple of paragraphs. Due to the nature of the work (three colour printing wasn’t available until the late 19th century), it is likely that the author produced only a single copy. And it’s very cool is that this copy survived.

Shown here are two opposite pages of the index (“blatwijser of regisster”).

Tags: , , , ,

August 8, 2014

Cabin pressure for Ryanair at Eindhoven Airport

Filed under: Aviation by Orangemaster @ 12:33 pm

pilot-profile1

On 4 August, Eindhoven Airport decided to close for air traffic at 15:45 sharp and hold a ceremony for the C130 aircraft bringing back more bodies from flight MH17 shot down in Ukraine.

A Ryanair pilot on approach to the airport at 15:32 got turned away by air traffic control (ATC) and told there would be a one hour delay for landing, which eventually forced the plane to divert. The pilot told the tower that they planned to get in on time between 15:30 and 15:40, a flight plan that was approved beforehand. When refused landing, the pilot got upset. A former Dutch pilot recorded the verbal volley and a YouTube controversy was born.

The former pilot completely understands the Ryanair pilot’s frustration who did everything he could to land his plane on time before the airport closed. For the many people on the Internet who hate Ryanair, it would be too easy to say that the pilot had no respect for the dead, which Ryanair says is not the case, and why would it be. The pilot was very much on time and if we believe what we hear, ATC isn’t really giving them a good excuse as to why they couldn’t land before 15:45 besides letting us assume that the events were not very well coordinated, as echoed by the pilot.

Perhaps the pilot could have stopped arguing earlier and just diverted as instructed, but not trying to land the plane with an approved flight plan would have also made him and Ryanair look bad. I can imagine it was easier to try and convince ATC since they weren’t saying why they couldn’t land, which probably would have appeased the pilot and given him something to pass on to the passengers, so that they wouldn’t blame Ryanair. I don’t see why the tower didn’t say ‘sorry we messed up, please understand’ and get Ryanair to divert instead of stubbornly not giving the pilot a straight answer. The Airport could have also easily closed for more time than they needed considering the circumstances. Bad communication all around, with a distinct hint of cultural differences.

(Links: www.nieuws.nl, www.omroepbrabant.nl, Photo of a dress-up co-pilot clearly sitting in the wrong seat)

Tags: , ,

August 7, 2014

Queen Máxima makes Vanity Fair’s best dressed list

Filed under: Design,General by Orangemaster @ 5:13 pm

Much to the delight of the Dutch, Queen Máxima has made Vanity Fair’s list of international best dressed for 2014, along with fellow royal Crown Princess Mary of Denmark who have a lot in common. Both women were ‘commoners’, have non-European origins, are nearly the same age and both have a lot of children. The list also features Kate, Duchess of Cambridge who has also made the Hall of Fame list for appearing numerous times.

A television show in 2012 claimed Belgians had called Argentinian-Dutch Queen Máxima “photogenic but phony”, usually not having much to say about their own Belgian Queen Mathilde besides that she is ‘professional and actually born of Belgian nobel ancestry’, as opposed to being a ‘commoner’. Both Máxima and Mathilde are surely friendly to each other, Mathilde being the godmother of Máxima’s second daughter Princess Alexia and all.

Máxima caught the attention of VF by wearing a green vintage dress worn by her mother-in-law Princess Beatrix then Queen Beatrix. Yes, Máxima also wears Dutch fashion by designers like Jan Taminiau, but sadly that is not what got people’s attention.

(Link: www.fashionaddict.nl, photo from 2006 by the Netherlands Government Information Service, used with permission)

Tags: , ,

August 6, 2014

Lab meat inspires futuristic cookbook

Filed under: Animals,Food & Drink,Science by Orangemaster @ 4:07 pm

Back in early 2012 we told you about lab produced meat being made, and in late 2013 about the meat finally hitting the grill. Now it’s time to level up with a test-tube cookbook called ‘The In Vitro Meat Cookbook” written by Dutch-based scientists, chefs and artists and recently presented in Amsterdam.

“While some dishes are innovative and delicious, others are uncanny and macabre,” such as roast raptor, dodo nuggets and oysters grown from meat stem cells.

The idea was not to get people cooking so much as letting people imagine future possibilities.

(Link: phys.org)

Tags: , ,

August 5, 2014

Philips develops headset that reads thoughts

Filed under: IT by Orangemaster @ 10:54 am

Emotiv

Inspired by the wishes and needs of ALS patients who gradually lose motor functions including their ability to speak, “the Emotiv wireless EEG neuro headset uses sensors to tune into electrical signals produced by the brain to detect a user’s thoughts, feelings and expressions in real time.” The headset addresses two major issues of ALS sufferers, namely regaining the ability to communicate with the people around them (friends, family, loves ones) and regaining control over the things around them (TV, lights, Internet).

Patients’ thoughts are registered by the headset, which passes the commands on to specially developed software in an app or tablet. The information is then passed on to specific devices around the house, as shown in the video below. Dutch ALS patients and associations have responded positively to the headset so far, but there’s no ready-to-use version of it on the market yet.

The video is in English, with English subtitles.

(Link: www.bndestem.nl, Photo: emotiv.com)

Tags: , ,

August 3, 2014

Unions object to amateur bus drivers

Filed under: General by Branko Collin @ 10:29 pm

buurtbus-syntus-michael-1988Currently more than ten percent of the bus drivers in the Netherlands work without pay, Volkskrant reports.

Volunteer drivers are used on unprofitable routes, or so the companies that employ them claim. On the other hand Labour union FNV Bondgenoten claims that the amateur drivers are putting paid bus drivers out of work.

Egmond Online writes that line 408 from Egmond-Binnen to Egmond aan de Zee currently employs over 40 volunteers. Els Geugies, chairwoman of Vereniging Dorpsbelangen Egmond-Binnen (Village Association Egmond-Binnen), says that volunteers don’t just drive: “We also need to make schedules, fill up on fuel and clean the bus inside and out.”

Last month the city of Rijsen started using people who are on welfare as cab drivers. Hermien ten Bolscher of cab company Taxi Gerritsen told RTV Oost there weren’t happy with the cheap competition: “As it happens we were also unemployed when we started [four years ago]. We have had to make some big investments in cars, licenses and other things. It is wrong that we now have to compete with cab companies that get subsidized.”

It’s not clear from the article whether the unemployed cab drivers are forced to work for free. None of the articles mention if the amateur drivers have received training.

See also:

(Photo by Michael 1988, some rights reserved)

Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

August 2, 2014

Louis van Gaal makes club owners richer already

Filed under: Sports by Branko Collin @ 3:22 pm

louis-van-gaal-paul-blankThe football season has yet to start, but new Manchester United head coach Louis van Gaal is already giving the club’s owners plenty to be happy about.

The six children of late American entrepreneur Malcolm Glazer are about to make a load of money by selling 5% of their shares in British football club Manchester United, Yahoo! writes. The share price rose steeply after the announcements of both Louis van Gaal as head coach and Adidas as main sponsor, going from 14 USD to 19.31 USD last Wednesday, raising the value of the club to to approximately 3.2 billion USD.

The Glazer family will make an estimated 155 million USD on the sale and will hold on to the majority of shares. In order to underline their intentions, the shares they are selling have reduced voting rights.

Earlier in his career Van Gaal won major awards with Ajax, Barcelona and Bayern München. In his previous job as coach of the Dutch national team, he managed to reach third place at this summer’s World Cup, the more impressive considering that most his players came from lesser leagues such as the Dutch Eredivisie.

Manchester United’s prospectus warns buyers that the club’s worth largely depends on successes in the European campaign, according to The Independent.

Photo by Paul Blank, some rights reserved.

Tags: , , , , , ,

August 1, 2014

Watching someone eat chocolate for the first time

Filed under: Food & Drink by Orangemaster @ 12:18 pm

choco-phone-small

While at English-language summer camp in Québec in 1984 reading a copy of TIME magazine about the Summer Olympics boycott by Eastern European countries, my Polish bunkmate stared around the big canvas tent we lived in from her bottom bunk with her distinct lack of cheerfulness, not knowing what to do with her quiet time. For the rest of us, it meant reading in bed and scarfing down some chocolate we called ‘tuck’, a British expression we didn’t know was British.

The Polish bunkmate had parents rich enough to send her to Canada for summer camp, but not enough for her to have any tuck. The other girls didn’t take to her because she couldn’t speak English very well and was quite reserved. I decided it would be funny to let he read the propaganda that is TIME magazine and also gave her some of my chocolate bar. She looks at me a bit scared, broke off a square, popped it her mouth, and went very quiet. “It’s good,” she said, finally smiling a bit. “What, you’ve never had chocolate before?” She nodded for no. She was 15.

Now it’s time to see how cocoa bean growers in Ivory Coast react when they taste chocolate for the first time, as filmed by a Dutch TV crew. Just like the Polish girl, it’s hard to believe that anyone hasn’t had chocolate before, especially cocoa bean growers.

In Dutch, French and at least another Ivory Coast language, with English subtitles:

Next, the Dutch at a market are shown a cacao pod and can’t figure out what it is, even after tasting it. I like the older man who wanted to say ‘abrikoos’ (‘apricot’) and turned into ‘Afrikoos’ (roughly ‘Africot’):

(Link: boingboing.net)

Tags: ,

July 31, 2014

Game show Lingo goes the way of the dodo

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 2:25 pm

Screen shot 2014-07-31 at 2.20.19 PM

After celebrating 25 years of entertaining the Netherlands with five-letter, six-letter and seven-letter word games, Dutch television staple Lingo will be pulled off the air at the end of September.

“According to broadcaster Nos, Lingo’s supporters include Ed Nijpels, a former VVD MP, and the chairman of AvroTros, who is planning to ask the programme director to reconsider.” Media Director Remco van Leen is considering moving the show from Ned 2 to Ned 1 in the 17:30 slot, but this would probably not increase the amount of viewers.

Many immigrants and expats have learnt some Dutch by watching Lingo and even by playing the CD-ROM video game that must be floating around the Internet somewhere. A last ditch attempt at getting more viewers in 2013 including inviting nudists to audition and doing a naked version of it. And then they’re always the Lingo moment that went viral with an unexpected dirty word on prime time television. Notice how calm the Dutch react to this contrary to other cultures that would surely panic.

(Links: www.dutchnews.nl, www.tros.nl, Photo: screenshot of Lingo by Tros.nl)

Tags: ,

July 30, 2014

Taxi app uberPOP making its way through Amsterdam

Filed under: Automobiles by Orangemaster @ 12:26 pm

As of today selected Amsterdam clients using taxi app uberPOP can organise taxi-like rides with private persons and pay for them using their smartphone. The company also offers two other services that feature properly licensed drivers and vehicles, but it is uberPOP that remains a thorn in the side of cabbies, as it offer rides up to 50% cheaper than normal cabs.

Besides having much more overhead (insurance, permits to drive over tram rails and bus lanes, etc.), cab drivers in Amsterdam have to write down every trip they take, which I find ridiculous and dangerous as many do it while driving, something an uber driver probably doesn’t have to do.

In London, where the app has been available for some time 12,000 taxi drivers protested last month, although many Londoners are gladly using the app. Earlier this year in Paris riots broke out, with people being hit and cars being smashed. The city of Brussels demanded uber make changes to its app in order to keep it legal, including making drivers obtain certificates of good behaviour.

The main objection to the app is that it takes work away from real taxi drivers, but then the app is legal and the drivers and cars currently meet local rules and regulations. Anyone is free to take a properly licensed taxi if they want, but with the mess that is Amsterdam’s taxi services, switching to uber will probably be a major relief for a lot of people.

In Amsterdam drivers continue to refuse small trips, preferring tourists going from Amsterdam Central Station to Schiphol Airport. They also often refuse animals, sometimes speak poor Dutch and/or poor English, and have one of the highest fares in the world. I personally get good taxi service when I need it because I don’t take taxis from Amsterdam Central Station, which is physically regulated at night by security staff like some Banana republic. Even tourist website ‘I Amsterdam’ says “Amsterdam recently launched a campaign to improve taxi services”, while happily listing uber under ‘special taxi services’. Fancy that.

(Link: www.elsevier.nl, Photo of taxi sign by Ben Fredericson, some rights reserved)

Tags: , , ,